Burn Scars
A Documentary History of Fire Suppression, from Colonial Origins to the Resurgence of Cultural Burning
Edited by Char Miller
Oregon State University Press
The first documentary history of wildfire management in the United States, Burn Scars probes the long efforts to suppress fire, beginning with the Spanish invasion of California in the eighteenth century through the US Forest Service’s relentless nationwide campaign in the twentieth century. In recent years, suppression has come under increasing scrutiny as a contributing factor to our current era of megafires.
An award-winning teacher and writer, Char Miller is the W. M. Keck Professor of Environmental Analysis and History at Pomona College. His most recent books include Natural Consequences: Intimate Essays for a Planet in Peril, West Side Rising: How San Antonio’s 1921 Flood Devastated a City and Sparked a Latino Environmental Justice Movement, and Theodore Roosevelt: Naturalist in the Arena. A Senior Fellow at the Pinchot Institute for Conservation, he’s Corresponding Member of the Society of American Foresters, and a Fellow of the Forest History Society.
